There’s no mistaking the fact that SSDs are the future. The traditional spinning disks that we’ve become accustomed to just can’t hold a candle to the SSD when it comes to performance. Of course things like capacity and price still keep these devices out of the hands of the general population for the time being.
So lets say that you’re someone who likes to be on the cutting-edge of technology. The SSD is going to be an obvious choice, but which one is right for you? Well, hopefully today we can help narrow your search down just a little bit. We’ve got a 256GB Crucial RealSSD C300 on the review table.
When it comes to your gaming PC, getting the most bang for your buck(explosion out of your dollar) is of the utmost importance. For many, this means overclocking components such as the CPU and video card, to milk every last bit of performance from the hardware without paying anything extra. The downside to this is of course the additional heat generated from pushing your hardware to its limits.
So how do you keep your rig running cool without breaking the bank? Obviously upgrading your stock cooling system is going to be your first line of defense against heat. Now do you go with air cooling, or a liquid cooling setup? These days, I’m all for the latter. For a minimal increase in cost, you can greatly reduce not only the temperature of your components, but the noise as well.
In addition to their indispensable graphics tablets, Wacom also applies their technology to more mundane solutions like their new line of eSignature tablets designed for checkouts, banks or anywhere an electronic signature is required. Three different models were recently announced including the top-of-the-line STU-520 which includes an 800×480 color LCD display which can be used for additional point-of-sale marketing and the STU-500 & STU-300 which feature basic monochrome displays designed to just get the job done.
And besides just capturing a signature, Wacom’s pen technology can also record and store additional information like pen speed and pressure which helps generate a unique biometric profile for the user making it particularly difficult for others to forge their John Hancock. It’s just too bad that their clever wireless pen technology is rendered moot in such an application since the stylus will inevitably end up tethered to the tablet.
There are other 3D mouse/trackball solutions on the market already, like 3Dconnexion’s SpacePilot Pro, but I like what axsotic has done with their 3D-Spheric-Mouse. At first glance it doesn’t appear to do anything different than your standard trackball, which would also let you rotate a 3D model in any direction, but if you check out the video I’ve included below you’ll see that the sphere can also be pushed, pulled and even lifted to re-position a model in 3D space.
I also like that it allows a 3D artist to use both hands when texturing or modeling, though being ambidextrous would probably help a lot with such a setup. The mechanics of the 3D-Spheric-Mouse, which includes both springs and magnets, allows for 1,000 dpi optical precision when rotating an object, and 2,170 dpi when panning or zooming. It appears to work with the hundreds of 3D packages currently owned by Autodesk (and presumably 15-20 more since this article was written) plus others that haven’t been bought up yet. Pricing and availability haven’t been announced though, but you can register on their site to be one of the first to buy one if you’re already sold on the product.
Should your older laptop be lacking a built-in SD card reader, but you find yourself in constant need of one, Elecom has just introduced this slim and svelte model known as the MR-C25 which you can leave attached to your computer even when packing it away. It sits fairly flush to the side of your laptop and also swivels so that it’s not blocking USB or other ports while it’s attached. It supports most types of SD cards including SDHC, SDXC and microSD, and should be available sometime in November, pricing TBA.
Being able to charge electronics from your computer’s USB port is a handy convenience, but even on a desktop machine, they can run out pretty quickly. But I promise you that running out won’t be an issue with Thanko’s charging board which features 80 ports letting you charge pretty much every single USB device you own at the same time.
Looking at Thanko’s website the board obviously needs its own power supply to juice every port, though I’m not sure if it actually comes with one, or the photos are just there to remind you that you probably don’t want to tie this into your PC’s existing power supply. It’s not wired for data though, lest you think you’d be able to attach 80 flash drives and use it as some kind of hackney RAID. ~$182 (¥14,800) available from Thanko’s website, or cough up $249.99 from AudioCubes and save yourself the import headaches.
DealExtreme, purveyors of bizarre, unlicensed video game crap (plus other stuff) and masters of the watermark are now offering this Wii console shaped SATA hard drive enclosure ($9.70) that for some reason includes two plastic Wiimote-shaped whistles. Tiny Wiimote-shaped USB flash drives makes way more sense to me, though including those as a premium probably costs a lot more than 1/3 of a cent.
The debate over the superiority of soft vs. hardware keyboards isn’t going to be resolved anytime soon, though with the rise of tablet computing and touchscreen devices over the past few years, it’s become more of an issue for those who prefer to bang away on keys. And it’s those types that the Back-Type keyboard, from a French company called AlphaUi, is targeted towards. It’s designed to attach to the back of smaller 5-7 inch tablets providing a set of 24 keys allowing you to physically type while holding the device, without diminishing its portability. The company claims after just a week you’ll be blasting away 250 characters/minute, and from what I can tell since the keys aren’t labeled you can actually configure the layout any way you want.
Now I have my doubts you’ll ever be reaching QWERTY typing speeds with this thing, but I generally like the idea. Now as to when it will actually be available to consumers is unknown. The company was recently accepting requests for beta testers via their website, so I’m assuming that the hardware has already been finalized. Maybe we’ll see them make an appearance at CES in January?
I made mention of it a couple of weeks ago, but unless you’re an IT type who hasn’t been completely demoralized by the job, it’s really hard to get excited about wireless routers. In fact, I think I’d be more eager to research and shop for washing machines and dryers than a wireless router. But in an age of laptops, iPads and other portable devices, a wireless router is pretty much a must-have accessory for any home with internet access.
But given how tech illiterate the majority of the world’s computer users are, a wireless router can be a nightmare for anyone who serves as the unofficial tech support for their friends and family. Thankfully someone, somewhere at Cisco has suffered the same fate, and as a result the company has done quite a bit to make the latest generation of their wireless routers extremely user-friendly. After playing with a couple of their models for the past week I would be completely confident in handing my parents one of these routers and then walking away, knowing that I wouldn’t receive a single tech support phone call while they set it up and got it running. And if you’re curious just how easy Cisco has made the setup process, you can check out my full review after the jump.
Related Tags: Hardware, Reviews, SSD
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